spend our days like matches
by FigureofDismay
Summary: After their dynamic-altering New Years eve confessions, Kiera and Alec struggle in the wake of a shifting relationship. Not to mention a shifting partnership after Alec's move and his new business alliance. Sequel to 'Like Real People Do.'
1. hold our hollow-hearted ground

Set, again, in a condensed Clock Wise!Verse AU, but doesn't tie in with the bigger fic directly. Or indirectly really. All you need to know: Family Time hasn't happened yet despite other S1 and 2 events, Alec is 23 because it made more mathematical and character sense. Kiera has been in the past for almost a year.

I have about a 1/3-1/2 of this written already, and I'm working steadily. I expect this will be about 4 parts.

* * *

Three weeks went by between new years and when Alec moved into the house share. In that time he was so busy with ferrying boxes and job hunting that he barely had time to do his usual support work for kiera let alone make sure that she was still comfortable with the new elements of their relationship. It wasn't like it had been a long time since their last more personal talk, but all the same he worried about the feeling of awkwardness that was creeping upon them. It was palpable even over the comm line, the unsettling tick of nerves setting in.

He didn't plan to push it though. When Kiera was panicked and digging in her heels she was just as likely to shut down completely, or else do something impulsive and extreme. He wasn't interested in seeing the status of their relationship, whatever that would turn out to be, become a point of contention or even an argument. That would sour everything comfortable between them before they even had a chance. He would be patient, he would be present, he would follow Kiera's lead.

Only once he was moved into the big front bedroom at Ricky's, and all his tech squared away and up and running, there remained a prolonged silence. Not that he and Kiera never spoke. Of course there was still investigative work and a foreshortened quantity of the usual banter, at times unthinking and carefree, and at times self conscious and taut with a new, knowing undercurrent. Other than that, though, was a careful avoidance. Alec tried at first, to make plans, to reach out, but Kiera was skittish and hesitant. Then he ended up avoiding her right back, for uncomfortable reasons of his own.

Kellogg had been around to see him a few different times, and every time he compared the ominous message from his future self and his current employment situation against each other, the more obvious it was that he would end up signing on with Kellogg eventually. Probably a lot sooner than eventually. It wasn't a move he wanted to keep from Kiera, not if he wanted to keep her trust, but he didn't look forward to facing her judgement on it either. The thought of disappointing her left a sick feeling in his gut, but there was so much he could do with Kellogg's wealth, it was like a pathway opening before him in the impenetrable blankness that had seemed to stand between him and his ambitions. He had to take the chance.

But first he had to tell Kiera. And to do that he had to ignore his mandate of patience and go to see her.

* * *

The winter so far had been dry, clear, and bitterly cold and Kiera was getting intensely tired of it. It was frigid going for her morning run. It was icy wandering the city in the course of investigations, especially when she needed to call on her suit for it's camouflage capabilities. It was even persistently chilly holed up in her hotel room in the evenings, the building's heating being tepid at best. It wasn't like the relatively more mild and wet winters she knew from her home time with it's altered climate, and it left her worn and tense.

Although of course it wasn't only the weather leaving her wound and unsettled. The lingering silence between her and Alec had stretched now for long enough that she felt like she was going stir crazy within it, the sensation of claustrophobia creeping up on her.

* * *

At last, after the deal was all but done with Matthew Kellogg, and the security code to the Lab had been set to his specifications, Alec reached out to Kiera and arranged to meet. It had to be said in person, he knew, or he would put it off again. He knew she would be hurt. He knew she would see it as taking the side of her enemy over hers. Her world view was so stark at times, frustratingly bare of nuance. And yet, he did know deep down that it was a betrayal in a way, to both of them and their ideals - it was a compromise that stung. And even if wasn't a betrayal in itself, keeping such a secret from Kiera of all people, who gave him so much trust, who made herself so vulnerable to him, that was a wrong thing. That was a betrayal. He was resolved, and he'd come clean just before the final papers were signed.

Kiera was wary when he talked to her, she seemed sure that something was wrong. He wondered how they'd wandered so far so quickly from simple, giddy nerves after a few new years kisses and the mutual realization that there was something more to their relationship to explore. He wondered if she thought he'd had regrets, or that his feelings had shifted once acknowledged. He wanted to reassure her, except that that seemed presumption itself with the question of the future looming thus, grim and with every appearance of greed. They had to weather this inevitable conflict before he could begin to hope that they could rekindle that closeness.

They met up outside a coffee shop just about midway between Ricky's and her hotel, and realizing that their conversation was better not overheard Alec had brought their drinks already when Kiera showed up and he herded them back in the direction of his new lab. It wasn't finished, awaiting contracts and final specifications, but he wanted her to see it in person so that she would at least know what it was and what it wasn't. They walked along through the brightly misty February day, voices pitched sharp but quiet through habit learned from arguing over the comline. Of course, once Alec had broached the subject of with whom he was going into business, that strained quiet had been replaced by bald outrage.

"Kellogg," she repeated again in flat disbelief.

"Yes."

"Matthew Kellogg."

"Yes."

"Matthew Kellogg, as in terrorist sympathizer and conspirator, entrepreneur with the morals approximate to pond scum, _that_ Kellogg?"

"Yes, Kiera, yes, I believe we've established that already."

"Have you gone insane? He's using you!"

"Yes, he is. But I'm also using him. He has the startup capital. He knows how to make the business connections. He knows the market. Hell, he knows the future just as well as you. I'm not saying he's a good guy, and I don't trust his judgement, but I'm the controlling partner. The way I see it, if we're both in it to screw the other guy, neither of us will get away with very much. Think of it like checks and balances."

"You don't know what he's like, Alec. He's no less dangerous than Travis and Garza and the rest. He went along with the bombings, the murders, the sabotage. He's as guilty as they are. How can you go into business with someone like that?"

"I'm not going into business with him, he's going into business with me. Theoretically." he sighed deeply and paced away from her before turning back. "Look, what do you want me to say? I know this is the stupidest thing I've ever done, at least so far in this timeline. But who else is going to back me? Who else is going to understand the plainly absurd depth and breadth of the situation here? The people who know the truth about all this are you, me, Kellogg, Liberate and Jason… and possibly, apparently your Mr. Escher but we have no idea who he is. That doesn't leave me with a lot of options here."

"But in my timeline, you must have gotten started without Kellogg's help. You hadn't sent him back yet. There must be another way. If it came out who you were working with… Alec, this could go so badly for you."

"In that timeline, yes, as far as I know, that's true. But… you've seen the message Kiera. You told me yourself about the how soon everything starts to change in the world. Don't you understand the kind of pressure that puts on me? If I don't get off the ground and build something now, if we don't get established then it's the Eschers and the Kelloggs of the world who are going to end up with all the power."

"If you're working with him, he's _already_ getting that power," she insisted, sounding pained, "Alec, how can you be okay with this?"

"I'm not okay with it. But I'm not willing to turn down an opportunity like this just because I'm uncomfortable. I get final day in all projects. I get resources to help you go on pretending to be section six, which is not fantastically legal either, by the way. And best case scenario, I figure out how to get rid of Kellogg before he gets too established."

"You know that's not likely, right?"

"Well. Nothing about this is more likely or unlikely than the rest of it, so…" he shrugged, feeling defeated but knowing that he'd taken the only course open to him even if it was an morally unsettling one.

"So this is why you've been avoiding me," said Kiera.

"Yes. I know that it was cowardly, but I didn't want to tell you because I thought you'd be mad. And, just look how wrong I was about that, huh?"

"Sarcasm is not the move you want to make right now, believe me."

"Well sorry, but I find it kind of frustrating that you can't see just how good this could be for me, for both of us, if we're careful. You could try trusting my judgement about this, you know. This is a huge step forward in my life."

"It's a step, that's for sure. Damn it, Alec, how could you do something like this… and then not even tell me about it! I thought we... I thought you trusted me."

"If I'd told you, you would have tried to talk me out of it," he said, and shook his head, realizing that line of thought was pointless, not to mention redundant, "I'm telling you now, Kiera."

They were nearing his new lab, and he offered to show her around, show her it wasn't that big and scary but also that it would give them a fantastic home base, and Kiera had reluctantly agreed. But then, as they approached the street-level door with the security keypad, she got a call from Carlos about a case he needed her input on, and she'd hurried away.

"We're already here," he urged, his patience starting to slip at last, "It would just take a minute, and then you can see that this whole thing might not be so bad."

"I'm sorry, Alec. I have to go," she said, already heading back the way they'd come.

He watched her go, frustrated with her avoidance and also feeling that betrayed her in ways that he didn't know how to fix, by agreeing to work with her enemy and by hiding that alliance from her for weeks. Kiera's moral code was eccentric, but inflexible when it came to the things she saw as absolutes. While he agreed that Kellogg was dangerous, he'd thought it through from every direction he could and didn't see any other options, not with the timeline he'd been given from his future self. Four years until the first stages of political dissolution, ten until climate change really began to build momentum, 20 until the first global food shortages, all unless something was done to stop it.

It wasn't the life he'd pictured for himself, and he already felt the phenomenal burden of it. He also, in a private, petty way, resented that much of his innovation, many of the things he would be presenting to the world as his alone would not be. True enough, they belonged to a version of him, that old bastard with such skewed compassion that he would try to save the world by condemning Kiera and the two other protectors who hadn't made it through, and liberate as well, to the strange purgatory of repeating history. That was him, his action and inventions, in a way. Intellectually he knew that. But still, he received these ideas ready formed and detailed, lacking only the methods of retrofitting them to the current technology. None of it would feel like a triumph, but instead it felt at best like a life preserver, something slung out from above, to cling to in the times ahead and hope to survive, and at worst like outright theft. It would be unconscionable to turn away these gifts from the future on such petty grounds, so all he could do was be pragmatic and keep moving forward.

He didn't know how to say it so that Kiera would understand. He couldn't see why she would so easily trust him with her friendship, her own safety, her own life, but couldn't find her way to trusting him with his.


	2. we know not the fire

**in my defence, it's an important conversation.**

* * *

The marina was conveniently deserted as Kiera stalked down to meet Matthew Kellogg. It was a bleakly bright grey day and a dry, frigid breeze stung her face and made her tug her collar tight about her neck. She needed more winter clothes. She wished she'd thought to wear the scarf that Alec had given her, as much for the sign that his loyalty did indeed lie with her, or had, as for the protection against the cold.

There were many ways in which she didn't find Kellogg intimidating. He was slight, and squeamish when it came to getting his hands dirty personally. He was chronically self interested, and he avoided direct confrontation wherever he could. He didn't lash out with violence and though he lacked morals, he wasn't impulsive and disconnected from reality they way a few of his former co-conspirators were.

And yet there were many ways that Kellogg and trying to deal with him made Kiera intensely uncomfortable. He was manipulative, and he was skilled about it. Kellogg could read people more quickly and more accurately than she'd ever been able to, and he tried to use their natures against them for his own gain. More than that he pushed, he wheedled, he joked and leered and flirted, and Kiera was never sure just how seriously he meant it. She thought it was meant to unsettle her more than anything, but it still made her unsettled and wary around him.

Much of the time she would rather some good, honest hand to hand than try and deal with someone so unpredictable, someone so duplicitous. She went to meet him anyway, a day after her argument with Alec and hoped to catch him unawares. Kellogg had managed to tie his fate to Alec's, and Kiera needed to know what exactly he was up to.

The sleek, elegant boat was legally purchased, Kiera had been sure to check that once she'd learned about it, and she'd been disappointed that it didn't giver her a visibly shady deal to use against him. It stood at its dock, quiet on a still harbour, and the lights of the cabin shown merrily in the dour morning.

The encounter didn't go well.

Kellogg had come out to meet her as she climbed aboard. He looked wary, but also pleased with himself.

"I wondered when you'd be along to scold me," he'd, "You're late actually. I expected you some time last week. Brave, young Mister Sadler must already be learning to keep secrets."

She had to pause and remind herself that above all, Kellogg knew how to get a rise out of people. "He didn't think I'd approve. Imagine that."

"How very droll. And you've come to voice your disapproval in person. Well, I'm sorry to tell you Kiera, the deal is done, the papers are signed. We're all going to be seeing a lot of each other in the coming months and years, life would be so much more pleasant if we could all be friends."

She'd scoffed in disbelief. "Wouldn't your other… _friends_ find that a conflict of interest?"

"I was with Liberate because of my sister, and because Travis and Curtis were pretty damn ready to shoot dissenters in the name of protecting the cause, _and_ because it seemed right at the time. Now, _this_ seems right. And while you obviously disagree, you don't actually have any say in the matter."

She'd rebelled in the face of his cool smugness, reduced to a fury that only seemed to please him more. Kellogg retreated eagerly enough, hands raised in mock surrender as she'd unthinkingly advanced on him. But on his deal with Alec, he wouldn't budge.

"My benefits here are twofold," Kellogg had told her in a pedantic tone that reeked of gloating, "The first is obvious, if his career follows anything like it's original path, a very great deal of wealth. Not just money, not just cash, but wealth. There's a difference you know. The other involves you, my dear former Protector, and your friends at in the police. Alec is now my shield. If you try to take me down, you'll end up tanking his fate as well. And you would never allow such a thing to happen to our friend the wonder-boy, would you?"

"You had no right," she'd yelled at him, frustrated to incoherency and choking on enraged helplessness that she couldn't seem to convince either of them back to their safe, rightful places. "You have no right to meddle in Alec's life like this! He's just starting out. He's not like he was before," she'd insisted, and had been horrified to feel angry tears prick her eyes.

"I have no right?" Kellogg had said calmly, and then seemed to take pity on her. "Kiera," he, without malice, without pity, "What do you think you've been doing with Alec's life this past year, if not interfering? It's not like I was a fan of the greedy monster that SadTech became, you know. I wasn't with Liberate entirely out of fear. Or I should say, entirely out of fear of Travis Verta, the Corporate regime scared me shitless, if you must know. But you saw the same thing I did. A young Alec Sadler, brilliant, unjaded, with a biological heart still beating in his chest, ripe for success. What an opportunity."

So Kiera left the docks again with nothing having changed. Her steps were slow, and there was bruised feeling in her heart as she realized with a chill and a hollowness that Kellogg wasn't exactly wrong. She had recognized who Alec was, had realized what Alec could do for her and had used it to her very effective advantage. Though she tried to reassure herself that he had offered his help, that he had insisted and all but badgered her into accepting, she couldn't quite deny that her influence on Alec had had some effect. And there was no way to tell but by the slow pass of time what that effect would alter.

She only prayed that time was not some great infinitely repeating hoop. That she and Alec were not mere parts in a mechanism of paradox, and that that effect would not turn out to be what had driven the great head of SadTech, Honorary Congressman Sadler to coldness, to indifference and inhuman distance.

* * *

He couldn't sleep, which was usual lately, was the pattern of a great deal of his life in fact. His mind was too active and he spent too much time around computer screens and there was always some project that seemed more compelling than trying to disengage and unwind. Only tonight he wasn't sleepless in the grips of some urgent, beautiful bit of workflow, tonight he was stuck. He was frustrated. He was indecisive and making no progress, and he was sick of staring at a monitor and listening to the tiny, restrained whir of the cooling fan in the computer tower. He scrubbed at his face with hands gone cold from typing and pushed off from the desk.

It was three in the morning, on a cold, drizzling night in February. He hadn't heard from Kiera since their disagreement five days before. Especially worrying as he'd heard from Kellogg that she'd been to see _him_ , in what sounded like an explosive encounter, but hadn't returned any of Alec's messages.

Ricky's big victorian was quiet and drowsy. The long, narrow upstairs hall was only lit over the stairwells, the little back stair to Ricky's attic suite at one end and the big main one down to the ground floor at the other. The doors to Dylan and Skyler's rooms were both shut tight, though from the profundity of the quiet the last few hours he suspected the other roommates had found other places to bed down for the night. The hallway's worn boards and the stair's narrow treads all ticked and cracked under his padding feet the way old floors should.

The dark ground floor was still unknown and unsettling, full of angles and sounds and subtle house smells and shadowed hillocks of furniture still unfamiliar to him but he didn't stop and peer around. The way to the kitchen was habitual at least, and the little spot light above the sink was still on, lighting the ingress for wayward house mates should they come stumbling their way in the back door, and highlighting also the perpetual disarray of the sink, counter and drainboard. He sighed.

"Doesn't anyone around here know how to wash a dish?" He said to himself and glanced around at the massive tan fridge, a humming, occasionally clunking presence, and the wilting potted fern hanging beside the kitchen window as though they might offer comment. He reached for the rubber gloves, looking to mindlessly pass the time.

He was wrist deep in hot soapy water and staring blankly at the rain-splattered windowpane, made a black and amber abstract by the aged streetlight on the corner, when the his phone buzzed. Text message. One of the guys probably, or Leon from the message board getting back to him about that weird bit of temporal theory. Or it could be the very person over whom he'd been trying not to obsess. He dropped the scrub brush and fumbled off the gloves.

He'd gotten Kiera set up with a real phone and a cell plan last fall, after a few hair raising near misses when he'd been away from the computer rig. She'd laughed at the messaging apps and called it quaint. And time consuming. And seriously old fashioned. But just like everyone else, she fell prey to abbreviations and emojis and was hooked in no time. Unfortunately she didn't always use abbreviations he was familiar with, forgetting that he wouldn't know her 2077 idioms, and she didn't use emojis according to current social convention. It was the small miscommunications like that, even more than her garbled half-predictions of current events and pop-culture ignorance, that hit home that his best friend really had come from another time. He found it charming, although occasionally mystifying.

 _I was hoping we could talk, are you still up?_ her message read

he called her rather than reply, wanting to hear her voice. "You're outside right now aren't you?" he said, giddy with relief and trepidation

"Hey, Alec," she said in a small, shy voice. chagrined maybe

"Hey yourself. I was beginning to worry."

"Yeah. sorry. I needed some time to think."

"Okay. So, are you? Outside, I mean?"

"I am. If that's okay. I could come back tomorrow…"

"No, I've been hoping to hear from you. Let me let you in though, okay? I'm downstairs anyway, scaling the drainpipe would be a wasted trip."

He finished up at the sink in the scant minute or two it took her to come around through the alley, and tried to breathe calmly, slow a heart that wanted to pound with hope and dread. Everything between them was so fragile, and yet so inescapable. The two of them were bound up with duties and practicalities beyond what mere working relationship could have, held it seemed at times by twining, pulling arms of time itself. They were bound also by something more fundamental than friendship, a basic recognition of one another, an ability to see the separateness and drive and lostness in the other that was usually kept hidden from everyone.

In so many ways this complicated their relationship rather than eased it. It made everything between them more raw, closer to the heart of things. Also, Alec realized, the longer he kept those vital things from Kiera for fear of how she might and could react out of that deep, vivid fear she kept, and hurt them both in order to retreat to the illusion of protective distance, that it made every secret more awful. There seemed to him nothing more destructive than left information undisclosed between

If Kiera was willing to talk now, he could make it up to her. Or not make it up but explain, and hope to convince her to trust, because he suspected that making it up at the moment would mean breaking ties with kellogg, which he would not.

Kiera looked uncertain and ready to take flight when he opened the door to her light tapping. Her hair and the shoulders of her green coat were damp, so she must have walked through the misty city. He ushered her in without a word, and bolted the door behind them against the vagaries of the night, with a sense of vulnerability to the world of strangers that was still new to him. He guessed this conversation would take a while.

"So," he said, taking in the image of tall, pale, lovely Kiera in Ricky's worn kitchen, a thing which had only happened once before in similarly strained circumstances. She looked unhappy, he thought, and nervous, all big sad eyes and tight posture. "Listen, I was going to make some tea. Why don't you sit down, okay?"

"I'm keeping you up, aren't I? Maybe I shouldn't have come here now."

"You're not keeping me up. I was up already, fighting with a nasty bit of code. And even if I wasn't… we need to figure this out, Kiera. We need to get to be okay again."

"Yes. Yes we do."

"Okay. We agree on something already. So. Tea?"

"Yeah."

While he fussed with the temperamental range and filled the dented kettle, Kiera perched stiffly on edge of the kitchen table. She was self conscious, maybe, or unsure of her welcome, for she kept her hands stuffed deep in her coat pockets and frowned resolutely. He watched her stillness out of the corner of his eye and felt a rising sense of futility, and of how precarious things really were between them.

"The chairs are safe, you know," he said, trying to speak with humour, "You could sit down. If we're going to talk this out."

"What about your roommates?" she said, "Aren't you worried about them…. Overhearing things?"

"It's three in the morning, Kiera, they're all out or asleep for the night. I mean, we could go up to my room if you're really worried but I thought this might be…. more like neutral territory."

"Oh. Right."

She seemed to come to a decision, and changed her stance, giving up, perhaps, on the option of immediate flight. Kiera shed her coat, slowly as though it was a careful, ceremonial act, and settled at his kitchen table to receive her mug of tea. This small act, this configuration of Kiera, here, now, felt momentous.

"I went to see Kellogg," she said, fiddling with the little paper tag on her tea bag.

"Yes, I know," he said, "He told me."

"He did. Of course he did. Did he… say anything about that conversation? Or was he just…"

"He said you yelled at him, and threatened him - which he seems to view as flirting, by the way, so I would, you know. Keep that in mind in future. And then he said that you kind of freaked out on him. He seemed, surprisingly, legitimately unsettled, but all Kellogg would say was that he thought I should talk to you about having our arguments with each other instead of with him. You wanna tell me what happened there?"

"I wanted to warn him off, make sure he knew his interference wasn't appreciated. But then… yes I did freak out at him I guess. Not that he doesn't deserve it."

"Of course."

"But Kellogg said something that actually did make sense, after I'd calmed down and thought about it," she said, looking up at him warily, "That I was so angry at him for getting interfering in your life because deep down, I feel guilty about doing exactly the same thing."

"No, Kiera," he said, and hurried to sit beside her, "Come on, you can't think that. You're not interfering."

"Right, and this last almost year of- of whatever this has been, with section six, and yes I _do_ know that's very illegal and if we were ever found out it would be even worse than the connection with Matthew Kellogg… all of that had no impact on your life and your choices."

"Of course it had an impact. Before you showed up, I was hiding in my father's old workshop, trying to avoid my family's expectations and meet them at the same time. Which is impossible. I was stuck and slowly going out of my mind with boredom," he said, emphatic and warming to his subject, "Not to mention, you know even better than I do exactly what kind of man I am in the future, what I became without your influence. It's been a good impact, Kiera."

"Oh, come on, Alec. Don't try to tell me that you would still be about to do a deal with the devil and putting on all this pressure if you hadn't gotten involved with all this."

"First off, Matthew Kellogg is a creep but he's not the devil in this and you know that. Second, you're taking too much credit here. I'm in this because of what I did. What my future self did. So are you, Kiera, and it wasn't all that long ago that you were pretty mad at me for that."

"I didn't say it was rational…"

"Okay. Just so long as you know I don't count it as interference. At least not the you part."

She looked at him, steady and skeptical and he tried to will her to believe him, though he knew that guilt wasn't something you could let go of in the course of a single conversation. Kiera was a difficult person in many ways, he knew that, she was stubborn and she agonized over things. He admired those aspects of her when it came to her determination, her drive. He could see, though, like a vision of a winding road that was almost familiar but long, that he and she would struggle with those selfsame virtues. That she could and would be slow to convince and slow to trust, that Kiera deserved his patience but also that he would be tested, that he would have to learn when to wait her out and when to try to argue her around, or when to give up altogether.

"I think I was upset for another reason, too," she said, quietly, as though she could barely admit it, "I thought maybe you were avoiding me because you'd changed your mind. Since New Years. That would be alright, Alec, it would be if you had, but-" she hurried to reassure him, but stopped, a pained frown on her brow, her eyes bright and alarmed before she looked down, going back to her tea with a pinched kind of silence.

"No," he said, reaching for her hand, which she was slow to give, stroking the soft skin of her wrist, "No I don't regret that. The thing I regret is hiding and worrying instead of just talking to you. The not talking was terrible."

"You should have told me. You should have told me when Kellogg was coming to you with this offer. Yes, I would have tried to talk you out of it, but then you would have explained it like you did the other day and I would have understood."

"I know that now. I get it. We can't have secrets or this whole thing, all of it falls apart. I just felt bad about it, Kiera. I didn't like the choices I had in front of me, and to be honest here, I don't like the one I made. It feels a whole lot like I chose self advancement over doing the right thing, and I didn't want you to… know that, I guess. But it had nothing to do with regretting you and me."

"I don't think you did choose self advancement. I still don't like it, but… you're right. We don't have options," said Kiera, sounding tired, resigned. Her hand was warm in his, and still, but she leaned towards him, as though protecting their conversation from prying eyes.

"I don't know what's right anymore," she told him, "If you think this deal is the only way forward, then it is. The only thing I know is, I have to be able to trust you, Alec. I've never depended on anyone as much as I do on you and it scares me. Probably it should scare you, too, if you knew what was good for you. But I realized these last few weeks that I really can't do this without you, and I really, really don't want to."

"And the you and me part, the, um," he stopped and cleared his throat, heart beating hard, "The love part. What are your thoughts about that?"

"I don't know, Alec. I know that I care about you a lot, so much that it's… it's overwhelming. But I'm not very good with people, and I'm no good at relationships," she said and pulled her hand from his, crossing her arms defensively in front of her on the scarred table. "You know how you asked me if I'd been serious about anyone before Greg? Well. It's true that I wasn't. What I didn't tell you was that he was it. That relationship was the only one i've had, and I wasn't very good at it. Not that we fought, or that I was miserable all the time. But it was so empty. We were more like roommates who parented Sam, and I don't even know what happened."

"You were really young when you met Greg, weren't you?"

"I guess so. I was 19 when I met him, but we didn't start seeing each other then."

"And he was older, right? How did you meet?"

"Greg worked in the department at SadTech where my father was a consultant. They worked together a lot. Then my dad got sick, and Greg did a lot to be sure he got the best referrals. When things got bad I was able to get leave so I could visit, and Greg was so considerate. My mother and I weren't really talking at the time, and Greg kept me company a lot. We found each other again when my tour ended and then… well, then Sam appeared on the scene and things followed from there."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds a little bit like he was taking advantage of someone young and having a hard time."

"No. I don't know," Kiera said but she sounded unsure, "It wasn't like he was pressuring me. And things are different in my time. Young adults are so sheltered here, but I'd been independent for years."

"Kiera, there's a reason teens and college kids are sheltered. Just because society was okay with it doesn't make it necessarily right."

"You're only a few years older than I was when Greg and I got together, by your logic doesn't that make you too immature for… for…" said Kiera, defensive but trailing off awkwardly with a shake of her head.

"Well, I guess it's possible, though I think I trust myself enough to know where my boundaries are. Of course, if that's what you think, then this is never going to work, regardless of anything else. I'm not saying you made a mistake, you know." he said and sat back, breathing deeply and trying to collect his thoughts.

"I don't think you're immature," said Kiera in a small voice, "I shouldn't have said that."

The refrigerator behind them ceased its humming with a heavy thunk, leaving a thin silence. He didn't want to antagonize Kiera, he didn't want to sting her with accusations of ignorance, with the way he knew she could be swayed by powerful forces and powerful personalities in such a way that she didn't seem to realize that she was following someone else's agenda. He knew instinctively that that wasn't something she was ready or able to hear, and to bring it up would be cruel, would punishing Kiera for the anger he felt at the lost husband he would never meet.

He understood all too well why Greg had loved Kiera, had looked at her fine, elfin face and her deep sadness and her determination in the face of bleak tides that pulled at her. Alec knew what it was to see her beauty and her lostness and want to take her in, and take or on. He feared sometimes that he was also taking advantage, that he'd used her dependence on his expertise as a way to keep her near, to win her over.

She didn't want to do this without him, she'd said, her voice soft and choked with emotion.

"I just meant," he said carefully, "That it seems like you weren't the only one at fault. That you were young. That Greg was a nice, persuasive, but distant kind of guy who doesn't sound like he was trying that hard to make it work. That can't make a sweeping, lifelong judgement on whether or not you can handle relationships on the basis of one disappointing example."

Kiera looked at him, finally, at last, rising from her defensive hunch. "I'm scared, Alec," she said in a tight, urgent voice, "You're the closest friend I've ever had. More than that I don't think I could survive here without you. I can't pretend that I don't... have feelings. But what if you get tired of me? What if I don't measure up to the image you have, and I make all the same mistakes? If this all falls apart, what happens to me?"

"There isn't anything you can do that would make me give up and abandon you, Kiera," he said, trying not to feel hurt. "Even you don't feel the same way about me as I do about you, I would never just cut you off

"It's easy to say that," she said, sounding so defeated it made his heart hurt, "But who knows how long the road will be. In another few weeks it'll be year since I landed. You already did this deal with Kellogg without telling me. What else are you going to do that affects us both without my knowing? Are you going to start making decisions for my own good, too?"

"That isn't fair," he protested, "I wouldn't do that."

"The way Greg would look at me sometimes was chilling," Kiera confessed, her voice thin with emotion, "So much pity, so superior, like he thought I could never understand all he did or why he did it. It was awful. I didn't even want to notice when he did that, but I did."

And this was what she was calling a not unhappy marriage, he thought with a helpless sense of hurt on Kiera's behalf. He was suddenly, recklessly glad that she'd landed here with him, outside of the reach of the controlling, heartless figure she described. Alec realized he'd sparked off old fears and old wounds when he'd acted for both of them in his deal without telling her about it.

"Well, Kiera, I'm not Greg. And I'm really sorry I kept the deal from you. It's not like I thought you weren't smart enough to understand the reasons why I did it, I just thought you would find them morally lacking. Because _I_ do," he said, and reached out again to stroke her shoulder, awkwardly, wishing to hold her again but unsure how to accomplish such a thing from their adjacent, cumbersome kitchen chairs. "I don't think there's anything I can say that would convince you it won't be like that. But maybe you could give me time? Maybe you could try to trust me for a while so that I can… try and prove it?"

Kiera considered him with an intent frown, weighing the risks, maybe, or weighing memories. She looked tired, he thought, but maybe not so unhappy as before. Still, the indecisive pause dragged. A fresh, harder gust of rain spattered against the kitchen window.

"If you something for me like I feel for you, I mean," he said, trying not to fidget, wanting to give her an out, "It's okay if you just…"

"The truth is I do. Actually, I," she said, she cleared her throat awkwardly, looking flushed, "I never expected… when I realized who you were, who you would be I mean, that first night, I don't even know what to think. But your voice on the line kept me sane when being here was so new and so…"

"Traumatizing?" he suggested.

"That's a good word for it. And then, talking to you was like we'd known each other for years. Not awkward and careful, but good." Kiera smiled a little wry smile, "That's really rare for me."

"Yeah, for me, too," he said.

"And then we finally met… I didn't expect you to be so _young,_ or so… so..."

"Please do not say adorable," he said, half-joking, "I'm not sure my ego can take it, or any variation thereof."

"Beautiful, I was going to say. Or lovely, maybe," she said, with an embarrassed look his way, "Whichever is less injurious to your pride."

" _Beautiful._ Really?"

Kiera looked conflicted, or perhaps mortified. " _Yes,_ " she said, "I wouldn't lie about something like that."

He was aware that his face was hot and he was probably blushing within an inch of his life. "Well, then," he said, "That's definitely better than adorable."

"I don't think you understand, Alec. I don't usually notice how people look. I mean, the facts of what people look like, sure, but I don't usually notice how they look in, uh, in relation to how I feel about how they look."

"Um," he said, trying to catch up, "Wanna run that by me again?"

"The point is, I _noticed you._ Only you were young, and I was married, and I was going home soon, and I shouldn't have been noticing anything besides being terrified," she explained, turning to face him fully, pushing her chair from the table, "So I was confused. I've been conflicted"

"I know the feeling, Kiera. I did plenty of noticing on my own, remember?"

"Yes. That was another reason to be conflicted," she said, "But I'm still here. And it looks kind of like here is where I'm going to stay. But instead of that seeming like this huge, bleak thing, the way it did on new years, it feels… _possible_ ," she said, her voice full of emotion, her eyes brimming with tears, "It feels hopeful, even. And you, us, that's a great big part of it."

"Kiera…" said Alec, overwhelmed with hope of his own.

"I want this to work," Kiera said, urgent and insistent, "I don't want to just float along and pretend it doesn't really matter, or that we don't really care. I want us to be _happy_. I want to try."

"Yes, Kiera. I want that, too. Very much," he said, thinking that sometimes he was overwhelmed by how much he wished for Kiera to be safe, and happy, and loved, far more acutely than he wished for those thing for himself. Alec stood, then, slowly, with ceremonious deliberation, and extended his hand in offer. "Come upstairs with me, Kiera," he said, "It's late, it's raining, it's cold. Don't walk back, come stay with me."

She stood, too, and took his hand. Her fingers were chilled but warmed to his. She stepped near, eye to eye, almost nose to nose. Even her pale eyes looked dark in the dim. Her expression was soft, tender with a question in it. "Come upstairs, and…?"

He leaned even closer and kissed her, not chastely this time. It was a brief kiss, a teasing dragging of lips. He caught the catch of her breath, and savoured it, and then opened his eyes to see her again. "Come upstairs and see what we see," he said.

"Yes," said Kiera, her voice a whisper, her grip tight.

She followed him with easy stealth, through the dark corners of the first floor, up the steep, faintly creaking stair. She hesitated briefly, a pace behind him as they came to the hallway, but only, it seemed, until she saw which room was his. She released his hand only to close his door.

* * *

Early the next morning, with the uncompromising glare of the watery February sun at his back, Skyler Lind shuffled home to Ricky's after his twice a week graveyard shift at the tiny local radio station where he DJed. The hours were bad, and the pay was worse, but despite the thick-headed feeling of a hangover without the alcohol he came home with on those bleary mornings, he loved the freedom he enjoyed during those night sessions. He jiggled the tricky back door lock and stumbled into the kitchen, remembering not to slam the door.

Inside though, while trying to decide if he needed a last cup of coffee or maybe a nightcap to send him off to his morning's rest, he noticed some things around the kitchen were a little odd. The sink was cleared for one, and the counters wiped. There were also two cold mugs of tea standing abandoned on the kitchen table. There was also an unfamiliar woman's coat draped over the back of a chair.

The cleaning was Ricky or the new guy, Alec, he figured. The coat, and it's wearer, he had no idea. He hoped Ricky hadn't thrown Tracie over for someone who wore almost-classy trench coats. _Nightcap_ , Skyler thought, _nightcap, shut the damn curtains, and none of my business_. With that head headed off to bed.

* * *

 **Well, so. That's a definite development. But no, we don't get to play voyeur, and I'm not sure we really want to... which is not to say there won't be glimpses, after a fashion. Tasteful ones i hope. But fade to black felt right for something so new.**

 **thoughts? questions? comments on the outsized nature of the dialogue portion?**


	3. we know not the fire: addendum

**I wasn't going to, but now apparently I am. How does smoke and mirrors and hand waving strike you? It seemed too important to leave out, and not really last chapter or the next one.**

* * *

See what we see, he'd said to her, and they had seen, at some length, with great care. She'd forgotten, or never know, how sweet it could be, like an instinctive, needful kind of conversation. When she was focused on delight and discovery, not ignoring old bitternesses. When she wondering if her partner had only taken an interest because he'd gotten bored of his current preoccupation, or had been gotten bored of and sent back home to the ever-patient wife. When everything was new again.

Alec was not the over-eager and inexperienced youth she had been expecting, nor practiced and over-coy either, but fumbling patiently along with her. She was inexperienced, too, having known only one other man, and unsure in many ways. She was surprised by how well, how breathlessly they caught and sparked together. Surprised by how well she liked Alec's well proportioned litheness, his frank appraisal of her, the waiting hunger in him and the quick, focused mind behind it. She found herself caught up in Alec's intentness, his curiosity, curiosity that was not general, not how does a woman, but instead personal and specific - galvanic.

She'd always found that desire was a delicate thing, easily embarrassed and that often shriveled and fled under scrutiny - which seemed like yet another of her failures at time, but protected her, too. She was not often tempted. As she'd told Alec, she hardly noticed. But Alec didn't seem to treat wanting as an accomplishment of his or a failure of hers, didn't treat her differently with his hands on her skin, with his eager mouth, than he did when he was a voice in her ear. Or his did, he spoke more easily, his eyes bright and avid as he murmured his awe and admiration, but didn't treat her as a different person than the one he knew in the ordinary day to day, as though wanting, and touching, and enjoying was not a feat or a favour but a natural evolution of what they already shared.

It surprised her, and the, distractedly, it helped to ease her from her embarrassed hesitance, and later, when she had thoughts beyond the sensory, she wondered at being surprised. Of course, if anyone could look at her nakedness and her desire and still see her, not some pretty fantasy, it would be the man who'd lived in her ear and looked out her eyes and knew her as well as anyone ever had. At some point, in the half dozing, half dreaming dark, afterwards lull, with thoughts love-drunk and disarranged, she wanted him to know how wonderful and rare that was, he was. She woke herself and him with a quick turn under his resting arm and hand to his side, how pale he was, how unexpectedly sleek and fine, and with his name.

"Alec, I wanted to tell you… I really like that we can be this way, and you treat me like I'm still me," she said, urgently but without clarity, realizing as she spoke that she didn't, still didn't despite a marriage and many years of vulgarities overheard on the job, have a working vocabulary for intimacy. "How do you do that?"

"How do I do what?" he asked muzzily, eyes barely open. His fingers twitched and released ticklishly at her back.

The round-headed anglepoise lamp on his desk was still on, casting it's studious light on the abandoned keyboard and leaving the wide, mussed bed deeply shadowed and brushed with coppery glow. The room was warm, stuffy even, with their humid exertions and with the dozing banks of computers and servers. She felt melted and languorous but lit up inside with something electric-humming and inchoate and unknown. She might not sleep again for hours, she thought, like waking from a bad headache or long fever with new life.

"I don't know," she said, deciding she couldn't come up with the words for what she meant, so she came at it a different way, "I worried, when I realized how you felt, and how I felt, that if I… If we… that you might look at me different. Like I was someone you didn't know, kind of."

"Be a pretty funny way to treat someone I didn't know," he said, coming fully awake and looking over at her clearly, a puzzled frown between his between his brows. "What's going on, you alright?"

"Yes, very alright, confusing, apparently, but alright," she assured him, blushing, remembering. "I just wanted you to know… No, I guess I wanted to be sure. That we're still us. Not awkward. Not…"

"Strangers. Right. I think I see what you mean now," said Alec, and reached up to run gentle fingers through her hair, smoothing it back from her shoulder. "Kiera, I don't think we could ever be strangers. Even that first night, remember how quickly…?"

"Yeah. I hadn't talked to you five minutes before I was sharing everything."

She wondered about that sometimes, if it was just that he was there and she was alone and afraid. She didn't think so. She'd been afraid she was ready to run, or to fight. If it hadn't been his voice, just the right voice leading her along, she would have cut the connection and not looked back. But it had been the right voice. She closed her eyes, feeling her head heavy against the pillow.

"I wanted to go to you that night, it seemed like you needed some company," he admitted quietly, "I almost did rush out to the city, only you needed me behind the computer. And I didn't want to scare you, showing up in person like a stalker or something."

She smiled at the sweet notion, his concern still evident. He'd offered to meet that very first night, and she wondered about that too. What it might have been like to sit across from a strange young man she knew by future name only, maybe at that cheesy diner on the corner by her hotel, and make a plan. Or maybe he would have convinced her to his loft lab, to the abundance and comfort of the farm. Or maybe she would have spurned him, and fled, finding his offer intrusive.

"I'm not sure I would have known what to do with you then," she said at last, "We did figure it out eventually."

"We certainly did. And then some," he said, emphatic.

"What does that mean?" she asked, opening her eyes again in question.

"I don't know, sorry" he said, reaching for the discarded, rumpled comforter, "I'm very tired, Kiera. I'll make more sense tomorrow. Aren't you tired?"

"Dunno if I can sleep," she said, because her mind felt bright and expansive, although her drowsy body gave lie to her wakefulness.

"Rest with me a while then." Alec pulled the bedclothes smooth and taut with a quick billow of cool air and she curled closer with a little shiver. "You are staying, right?"

"Of course I'm staying," she said.


	4. towards what we are allowed

_Apologies for the delay. We find ourselves in a new world now and I found myself squeamish, to say the least, to spend my time thinking deeply about Kiera's home. But missed these two too much, and in many (many) ways writing about them is therapeutic for me. And Spend Our Days is a good way to work out my ideas ahead of the 'could bes' and 'maybes' of Alec and Kiera, together, ahead of my work on the more serious Clock Wise. This work continues to be unbeta'd, all mistakes are my own._

* * *

He'd wanted a leisurely morning with her, maybe make her breakfast if they could avoid the roommates, but in the sober light of day he knew he had to keep his commitments. There was more equipment for the lab coming in and he had to be there to sign for it and see that things got squared away. Then he was supposed to meet Kellogg for some kind of onerous congratulatory lunch thing, and for a few mad seconds Alec contemplated dragging Kiera along in an effort to speed along deterring Matthew in his let's-all-pretend-to-be-friendly campaign, but that would be cruel to everyone involved, including any unlucky bystanders.

Kiera had hardly woken as he rushed around getting ready for the day, merely mumbled some protest against the light and commotion, and ducked under the covers. He was glad to see her resting so he wrote her a note and retreated quietly. He considered sending her a text to tell her to look for the note, but decided he was being ridiculous and clattered out of the house.

He didn't think anything could put a dent in the joyous buoyancy he felt, not the damp and foggy day, not the uncomfortably looming future. He didn't like to think himself so simple and base a creature to be so altered by sex and affection, but after all he was only human, and in love, a love newly reciprocated. Or if perhaps not reciprocated, not now, at least accepted and welcomed. He hummed, not so tunefully, all the way to the lab. He gazed around with proprietary contentment at his new domain as he got the systems up and running for the day. He greeted the delivery men with good cheer and signed their receipts when they arrived.

Then he looked at the invoices for these last deliveries, and every other thought was pushed aside with a faint, climbing sense of dread. Kellogg was spending a lot of money on him. He'd known that, of course. It had been the whole point of the arrangement. He'd even thought he had a general idea of how much was being funnelled towards his success. He realized with a sickening jolt that he'd seriously underestimated.

No expense was being spared in backing him, and Alec suspected that minority share or not, Kellogg would swift results and obedience from him in return. Alec had no intention of compromising his ideals to suit Kellogg's whims, but it was becoming clear to him just how much he really was, and would be for the foreseeable future, dependent on the investments of a man he didn't trust. There was still no other option, it was even more clear that he couldn't begin such a venture on his own. At his lunch meeting with Kellogg he signed off on the deal, and hoped against hope that he wasn't signing away his integrity.

These sobering realizations, that he would have to work hard and swiftly and cannily to come a free agent once more, managed the near-impossible of shaking his thoughts free from Kiera and their relationship. When he heard from her that afternoon, he was distracted, but glad to hear a friendly voice. Only it turned out that Kiera was on a case, needing some information, and she couldn't speak personally, or wouldn't in any case, with Carlos there to overhear. Her voice was careful and neutral, what he recognized as her professional persona, and his hopeful offer that they meet up that evening was met with a quick, whispered deferral to talk later.

Kiera's cased dragged on, and though he did research for her and they exchanged a few words they didn't really talk. A day passed and then another, and another, and though Alec's enjoyment of his new lab started to outweigh his concerns once more, he began to wonder with growing dismay if he had somehow simply imagined their night together, the confessions they'd exchanged. She'd said she'd wanted to try to be happy together, she'd been radiant and soft and clinging in his arms and then she'd wandered off back to reality, leaving him lost and sinking with longing.

At the lab, again, staying late, again, pouring over schematics from the future, again, he felt his mind wandering. He was infinitely patient about some things, projects he meant to conquer, his incremental work, but woefully impatient about others, and it appeared Kiera was one of them. It felt like months since he'd seen her, not three days. He knew it was a grueling, important case, and that she was keeping just ahead of Liberate to protect a new recruit who had turned whistle blower when it became clear that some kind of serious attack was being planned. Kiera said they'd never had an informant come forward in her time, but for once the population's ignorance of just how dangerous Liberate could be was working for them. Kiera was after the bigger plot, but their witness didn't have a lot of information and had refused flat out to go back to meetings to suss out more. Privately, Alec didn't blame him.

Kiera had been increasingly frustrated and withdrawn as the week dragged on. He knew it was because of the case, and he knew that she'd hardly been resting, let alone having time to come see him, he didn't blame her. He was frustrated as well, and not just by the distance between them, but the case and the danger and the chaos Verta, Valentine and the rest wrecked when he knew that he, or the future him was at least partly at fault for what damage they did here in his home time.

Still, despite what reason told him, he wanted to see Kiera. He wanted to seek her out, or insist that she come to him, or that she should take a break at least. Alec often wanted that, often worried that Kiera had wandered from single minded determination into self-damaging stubbornness. Before, he had assumed, with mixed regret and relief, that he had no right to raise those concerns with her. Now, since they were on more intimate terms and had built some kind of trust out of their admitted feelings, he felt that perhaps she might listen to him. Probably not agree but at least listen.

He checked her coordinates and saw that she was on the move. He tried not to monitor her feeds too closely, it would have felt intrusive and proprietary in ways he didn't like. When she was on a case though, Alec worried, and was on call for support, so his checks, his listening in from time to time had become an agreed to status quo. She and the VPD had gone to raid a warehouse by the port that they thought Valentine might be using as a lab, so he'd gone quiet so as not to distract her in the midst, but it had been a while.

"Kiera?" he asked, going online, "You haven't checked in in a while, everything okay?""

"Oh, hi Alec. Yes, I'm okay. We seized the chemicals they were storing, but we didn't take anybody in. Garza was there, guarding Ingram while he was doing…. Something with the lab equipment, I don't know what, and she got the jump on me. Garza and Ingram got away."

"Sounds rough. At least you got their hoard, that's something."

"I guess," she said, sounding resigned.

"And your witness guy is still alive, right?" he prodded, reminding her.

"Mostly because he didn't have any actually useful information, but, yes."

"Well, then," said Alec, smiling,"I think we can call this one a victory. Are you done with the mop up?"

"For tonight anyway."

"Do you want to get dinner and unwind? The vietnamese place with those egg rolls is still open. Or there's always the diner. Or I could make something, except, I don't feel like feeding the roommates too, scratch that."

"You can cook?"

"Of course I can. Everyone does their share on the Sadler farm," he said, gently mocking the old family attitude, "Aside from that, cooking's fun. It's chemistry that you eat."

"Huh. I never pictured you cooking, somehow."

"I can do more than computer wrangling, you know"

"I'm starting to see that," said Kiera, coy in a way that startling and pleasing.

Alec cleared his throat. "So. Do you want to get dinner, Kiera?"

"Alright. Egg rolls sound good. And that soup with the skinny noodles. Meet you there?"

They'd had a number of meals together in the city over her time there, before and after he'd moved away from the Farm, so he didn't feel much in the way of anticipatory awkwardness. If anything, he worried that, for the first time they'd seen each other since their night together, a quiet dinner in a noodle shop lacked a certain sense of occasion. But then Kiera didn't like a fuss, and it had been a long several days on a frustrating case.

* * *

The restaurant was dim, humid and narrow, seeming to stretch an improbable, red-and-gold distance back from the plate glass front windows. It was made up of tall, box-like booths in rows, and over each, suspended from the black painted warehouse ceiling, hung a creamy paper lantern like a multitude of small round moons. One long wall was lined with old, smudged foggy mirrors, which multiplied the glow-globes yet again. It was cozy, the atmosphere seemed insulated from the grey city, and the perpetual business during dinner hour and the high, echoing ceiling created an amorphous din that leant a certain privacy to any conversation.

He was a regular, and the hostess smiled in recognition and made sure he got a good table and complimentary pot of jasmine tea in short order, so he was well settled with Kiera appeared. She looked weary, though she smiled softly when she saw him.

"You're limping," he exclaimed, standing on instinct as she approached, though she didn't seem unsteady.

"Landed bad. The, uh, encounter with Garza earlier," she said, with a furtive glance around. She shed the trusty greed coat and hung it beside his barn coat on the hook outside the booth. "Not a big deal, just a bruise."

"You didn't walk all the way here, did you?" he asked, wary. Her sense of self preservation was often lacking by his standards.

But Kiera reassured him that Carlos had dropped her off, and though he wasn't the biggest fan of Detective Fonnegra on the whole, he was grateful for how accommodating Kiera's cop partner could be. He also made a mental note to be sure they got a cab, no matter where she wanted to head after their meal.

Dinner was nice, if quiet. Kiera wilted visibly, food and some distance from the marathon of a case unwinding the near-manic alertness she'd had when she came in. They talked about the case, the averted sabotage of the power station. They talked about how endless it seemed, how boundless Liberate's energy seemed when their own seemed to be flagging.

"I don't understand why they're not winding down. They're isolated, we keep shutting down every stream of cash we can find. Why aren't they tired and dispirited? I sure as hell am and we're in the same situation."

Kiera leaned now in the corner of the booth, looking now as tired as she claimed. It was easy to see that she was frustrated, that she found disqualifying fault with the most recent victory.

"There were supposed to be other protectors," he told her again, "It's clear from the recordings that he didn't even consider that the other three might not arrive with you. You're trying to do a job that was sprung on you and planned for a team of four, and you're still basically winning. That's no small feat, Kiera."

"I don't know if I'd call it winning. Holding them to an impasse maybe," she said, sounding frustrated, "But is that really enough?"

"Look, you're alive, your witness is alive, you stopped a major plan in its nascent stages," Alec insisted, catching and holding her gaze. "That's a win by anyone's standards. Maybe you just need some rest and some distance."

"Okay," she said, and her eyes seemed to clear. Most of the evening she'd seemed distracted, to be looking at him from behind the filter of her arduous case or her own self doubt, but now her mood seemed to shift. She focused on him, on the present. "Yeah, you're right, it's been a long week. I guess I'm not great company tonight, am I? And the first time I've seen you since…"

"You're never bad company," he said, nudging her foot with his every so lightly under the table. "I am however a little worried that you're going to drift off here in the booth, and I don't think I can carry you home, you know."

She rolled her eyes but she smiled so he called it a success.

"You wanna call a cab while I go pay?" he offered.

"Oh, come on, at least let me split it…" she said, catching his wrist as he made to stand up with the check.

"Not a chance, Kiera. Big, soul eating contract, remember? What good is my new found fortune if I can't spend it on people?"

They went to her hotel in the end. He wasn't sure if they were going their separate ways for the night until the cab stopped on her street and kiera asked him to come up, the presence of the driver in the front seat somehow stoppering their ability to speak as they would. He wondered about that, from where the embarrassment sprung, or if it was embarrassment at all or perhaps an hyperactive sense of protectiveness over what was theirs. We need practice, he thought, couple of too-private people, left to our own devices we'll be silent half our lives.

Kiera had apparently stiffened up after sitting, and the limp was more pronounced as they climbed to her room, but she waved off his proffered arm. He cursed the perpetually out of order elevator and praised the fact that her room was only on the third floor with the same thought. some selfish part of him registered a small but smarting disappointment that a warmer sort of reunion seemed inappropriate that night, even while another part of him, a long frustrated, perpetually concerned part, thrilled that Kiera was letting him near, letting him hover and dote.

Her room, as always, felt chilled and sparse. Very nearly a year she had lived there, and he was acutely aware that she hadn't accumulated much in the way of clutter or excess possessions to tie her in place. Still, the place was undeniably hers, her sweater on the back of the chair, her perfume on the air. Bare as it was, this room was her inner sanctum, a private space where he had not often been.

Now he was left alone, to settle in or to poke around, while Kiera went to wash the fight away in a quick shower. The woman had been in the military, and he had no doubt that her version of quick would indeed be a very few minutes. His curiosity was too strong, though, and he made a slow circuit of the room, taking in her small row of blouses and jackets in the closet, three ceramic mugs and a half empty bag of coffee grounds on the sideboard next to the coffee maker. On top of the dresser was the pretty bottle of scent, with it's spicy-spring smell that he now associated with Kiera, the few instances of the sensual nearness of her soft skin. He held it in his hand briefly, irrationally glad to see evidence of one of her very few indulgences in a life of self-deprivation. There were a small stack of battered paperbacks with price tags from the second hand store nearby, an odd combination of classics and cheap scifi, stashed in the top desk drawer. On the bedside table was the tiny action figure given to her by her son, and in the drawer of the same table was a cheap spiral bound notebook, a diary of sorts he guessed as he thumbed passed a few pages, seeing a few familiar names and dates in Kiera's tidy, blocky printing, and he shut it quickly, putting it away unread. A record of her unbelievable saga was a good idea, he thought, something he should consider doing from his own perspective, but for all the lack of boundaries between them, peering at her personal notes while she was unaware would surely be a step too far.

He was watching the news on mute, curious if the case would be mentioned or if they'd flown under the radar, when Kiera emerged at last. She was wrapped in a cream colored robe, soft knit over a simple matching shift that showed all too clearly clearly the long, beautiful lines of her, and also her startling, too-sharp leanness. Her long dark hair hung in sodden waves around her shoulders and her skin was pink and glowing from hot water. The picture she presented was almost unbearably intimate, and he felt warmed, protective. Kiera smiled at him nervously from the doorway and advanced slowly to the bed.

"Are you alright?" Alec asked, when he saw that she was still moving stiffly and favoring her knee.

"Possibly it's a bit more than a little bruise," she hedged, sitting on the edge of the bed beside him. "I'll be fine tomorrow, but I… sorry. It's probably not what you pictured."

"I don't know what I pictured, actually. Aside from you letting me down gently yet firmly I mean. But I'm here aren't I? You're letting me be here with you after one of these marathon cases instead of worrying about you by myself in the lab. I'm not disappointed with this, Kiera."

"You worried about me?"

"Of course," he said, almost insulted that she wouldn't just assume that he had. But of course she never assumed that other people cared about her. She saw herself as an island.

"I know how to take care of myself," she said, bumping his shoulder with hers.

"I know," he said, "I know you're tough. I still worry."

"That's sweet," said Kiera, ducking her head with a shy smile.

"Well, then… let me worry a little, okay? Do you have an ice pack? Some Advil or something?"

"Alright, alright, if it means that much to you. This is a one time dispensation on hovering though, Alec. Just because I've been awake for… way, way too long."

He puttered around while Kiera watched from the bed, propped up on pillows. She looked skeptical but tired. Alec wasn't surprised, not really, but was unhappy to find that Kiera was well stocked when it came to first aid supplies where she skimped and refrained and stuck to the bare minimum or less. Her bathroom drawer held over the counter pain pills in small plastic bottles and a single, cheap lipstick and mascara, not the collection of potions and colors that Miranda had kept. Her mini fridge held a couple ice-packs in the freezer compartment, a takeout container waiting to be discarded, and a small carton of milk.

He took an ice pack, the cold biting into his fingers, and sat for a moment in front of the closed fridge trying to turn aside the lecture that wanted to spill out of him. He felt the cresting wave of fear, the fear he always had about Kiera and tried to ignore, that she had no intention of living here while she was here, that all she was doing was marking time, keeping herself just about functioning while she sought a way back to home or her own destruction, whichever she found first. _Why won't you try_ , he wanted to rail at her, _why won't you try just a little bit, just enough to make this not a misery for you_? She'd said, that night last week, their night last week, that it seemed possible, that living here seemed possible, but she was still keeping herself like it was a jail sentence or like she'd taken vows to some kind of holy and deprived order.

He got out a t-shirt from her dresser, surprisingly she didn't comment on the fact that he knew which drawer was which, and wrapped it around the ice pack. He brought her the ice and then the pills and a glass of water. Kiera let him prop up her knee on on one of the extra pillows, flinching ticklishly as his fingers brushed the smooth skin at the top her her calf. She watched him with an expression that was equal parts indulgent and skeptical as he pulled and smoothed the covers up over top.

"This is slightly more hovering than I bargained on, Alec," she said drily.

He shrugged, knowing it was so but helpless not to want to worry and fuss and want to treat her gently to make up for her own callous treatment of her wellbeing. "I've been saving up, I guess," he said.

"Do you wanna stay?" she asked suddenly, taking his hand. Her fingers were freezing from holding the cold pack. "We could put a movie on, or that show you keep saying I should see, or… you probably have to get up early for that thing with Kellogg tomorrow, don't you?"

"Damn it. I forgot about that. Breakfast meeting, like he's so important that he's booked up the rest of the day." Alec scoffed and dropped to sit on the bed, hip bumping the long shape of her legs under the blanket. "Doesn't matter, I'd rather stay. But if we're having movie night, I'm going on a mission for provisions, because you need better snacks than half an almost-expired carton of milk," he said, and it came out sharper than he'd intended, the cutting edge of frustration showing through.

Kiera looked startled, hurt maybe, or puzzled. "Are you mad at me, Alec?" she asked, sounding confused, "I'm sorry I'm not a very exciting date tonight, but I don't know what you-"

"I'm not mad. I mean it, Kiera," he said, cutting off her protest, "I just… You don't make it easy for yourself here, and it makes me worry."

"I don't really think that's your responsibility, that kind of worry," she said, retracting her hand, frowning with a distrust that made him ache. "Just because we're friends or because we had a night together doesn't mean that you have to turn into my caretaker or something."

"'Have to' doesn't enter into it, even a little bit," he told her firmly, "But let's not get into all this now, okay? We've been awake and working forever, and I just want to take 20 minutes and go get movie night stuff. Please try not to take that personally, alright?"

"But we just had dinner."

"Yeah, but I'm still wired, and I bet you are too, and in a few hours when we want an after-midnight snack, that convenience store will be closed. There is logic to my plan, you see."

"Okay, okay, I can't fault your logic. Room key's on the sideboard. Just don't take forever."

"I'll be right back," he said, pulling his wallet out of his bag and leaving the laptop on the empty side of the bed. She had is passwords, she could browse if she wanted. She probably wouldn't, but he wanted to give clear signs that he was keeping no secrets now. He zipped up his jacket and headed out.

"And don't get a ton of stuff, you've seen how tiny my fridge is," Kiera called after him, mostly teasing now, quite the victory.

It took him more than 20 minutes, lured by the small maze of bright isles with their hectic, disjointed array of goods under florescent lights in the convenience store. Perhaps he'd gotten carried away, it was a bad idea to shop for sweets and comfort food while exhausted and scattered, but despite a few unplanned extras, he made it back to the hotel less than an hour later.

He'd thought while he walked over that he might sneak in some healthy, boring staple items, but the grocery selection was limited, and more than that, he'd heard the defensive note in Kiera's reaction earlier. Given time to put the pieces together, time to remember the way she'd talked about Greg, about the onerous, high handed way Greg had treated her, and he'd seen that he didn't want Kiera to start seeing him the same way. He could worry on his own but he couldn't push her, it would spoil their trust and regained ease. He could do his best to see that Kiera had some fun now and again. They could both use the break.

Movie night was fun, and normal in a way that was precious and surreal. Alec hooked up his laptop to the tv for easier viewing, and at first they talked about the show, a classic from his point of view and an antique from hers, but after a while the videos played on little-heeded as they talked disjointedly about anything and nothing. It was funny, but lying side by side, not touching, not looking at each other, it was easier to talk than it had been since new years. Almost as though they needed the gentle mimicry of talking over the comms, the freedom and private intimacy of it, to overcome the awkwardness of new nerves and expectations. The warmth with which Kiera looked at him now left him euphoric, the bone deep thrill he felt when she allowed, welcomed, responded to his touch was unlike anything he had known, he wouldn't give that up now, he couldn't. And yet he knew that their easy connection, their instinctive communication had been unsettled or disrupted by the shift in their relationship despite the reassurances he'd given Kiera that that could never happen.

He loved her. He loved her with an expansive joy and a gripping protectiveness that had become a part of him, like bedrock, like a propelling force. Alec knew her feelings far, far from indifferent, that she felt affection and attraction and longing for him even if it was not the same furious adoration he harboured. And yet it seemed increasingly obvious that bringing those feelings out into the open left them both off balance.

Later, as Kiera helped him clear off the bed, she paused for a moment, pensive.

"This feels kind of weird, doesn't it," she said, standing beside her side of the bed, looking across at him standing beside his.

"Kind of," he agreed, with some chagrin.

"Are you uncomfortable with this, Alec? I've been told that I can be bad at picking up on things like that."

" _No_ ," he insisted, "No I'm not uncomfortable. I'm not disappointed. I'm so glad to be here and so glad you're okay after everything that happened this week. I'm a little unsure where the boundaries are I guess."

"Me, too. I don't know what I'm doing, Alec. I don't know what I'm doing as a fake secret agent, and I _really_ don't know what I'm doing with you and me. You know," Kiera said with dark humour, "if you had any ideas of having an affair with an experienced, exciting older woman, you sure picked the wrong girl."

He stared at her, dumbfounded and stung, unsure if it was on his behalf or hers. "Kiera…" he said, "Jesus. You don't think that, right? I'm not looking to live out some kind of fantasy here."

"I know," she said softly.

"I want to be with you, Kiera. In whatever way you'll have me. Whatever that entails."

"I know," she repeated, nearly a whisper, "I shouldn't have said that. I didn't mean that at you, I meant it at me. We had that night and then I spent a week avoiding you…. I got nervous. I don't deal well with change."

"Well, who does? I'm nervous, too, you know," he said with easy confidence, and then, less so, "You were avoiding me?"

"Well. There was that witness to protect, and that plot to stop, but it felt like it."

"Okay. Okay. Well, that's not so bad. How about this, rule one of our new relationship, you tell me if you feel like you're avoiding me, you tell me about it and then we can figure out if it's something to worry about or not?"

"That sounds… not exactly painless, but we can give it a shot."

"Good. Now, get comfy and let me get the other icepack."

"It's really okay, Alec."

"Yes, and it'll be even more okay quicker with a little proper care. Indulge me, will you?"

* * *

When they were, at last, settled in the dark, tiredness winning out last over awkwardness and the lingering buzz from a tense case, Kiera carefully turned and curled into his side. She was using the cover of drowsy languor, maybe, but he could tell she was fully awake by the tentative way she moved, the nervous, hesitating way her hands settled against him. She was warm, clean and sweetly floral smelling from her shower, her head heavy on his shoulder.

Careful, he told himself, don't move too fast. It was like earning the trust of a skittish stray, though she wouldn't like the comparison. He thought back to her hasty words and wondered if she considered what was between them an affair, if she considered herself to be still married to a man who likely no longer existed. He wondered if she considered herself a widow, a woman who should still be grieving. He wondered if she didn't believe herself deserving of all the love and care he wanted to bestow her. The were not things he could ask her now, not yet, not in the small hours of the night as she settled more solidly against him, her breath on his skin. Alec waited until the tension in her spine eased before he held her in return.


End file.
